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Why do people leave organisations?

Posted on 03 October 2007 at 10:52

Have you ever heard the phrase 'People join organisations, but they leave people!' People will move on for career reasons, or leave because of changes in their domestic or social life, but where they have been very happy with the environment they work in, there tends to be some sadness associated with the decision to go, both from the individual and their colleagues.

On the other hand, people may leave 'just for a change' where the environment hasn't been quite what they were looking for, and here there is a sense of just wanting to move on, and sometimes that can't come quickly enough for both the individual and their colleagues. Interestingly it is rarely organisational issues that create this tension, it tends to be a lot about people and how they feel when they come to work each day.

In companies where staff retention and sickness absence is a problem, talking to the staff often brings up a whole load of small, apparently trivial issues about how they are treated, about how the culture has evolved, and how they would like to change things. Mostly these things can be changed if the management team are prepared to work with some of the feedback and make changes. Once this starts to happen, the changes in the working environment actually happen quite quickly.

It all seems so easy, doesn't it. Just working together! However, if you are the manager who has to make some changes to the way you run meetings, when you have been running them for many years to suit your needs, it takes a great deal of courage and conviction to say, "Ok, l understand what you are saying and I am prepared to change the way I do things to meet your needs as well as my own".

The challenge for us is to determine just how far we are prepared to step out of our comfort zone to make change. Or whether we are prepared to just keep recruiting in the hope of finding people who may want to stay.

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